John B. Taylor, the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former U.S. Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, will receive the Adam Smith Award from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) on September 10.
Taylor, who also is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, will deliver the 26th annual Adam Smith Address during the organization’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
As recipient of the Adam Smith Award, Taylor joins the company of the late Milton Friedman and George Stigler, who were also Hoover fellows; Gary Becker, the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at Hoover; and James Tobin.
NABE president Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank, said that Taylor is being recognized for his work as a groundbreaking researcher, public servant, and teacher during a career of more than 30 years and that he exemplifies outstanding leadership in the profession of economics.
During President George W. Bush’s first term, from 2001 to 2005, Taylor formed an international coalition to freeze and track terrorist financing and subsequently traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq to implement plans to stabilize the financial systems after the wars and regime changes in these countries. Taylor described his experiences “in the trenches” in his book Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World.
At Stanford he has also served as director of the Introductory Economics Center and director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Earlier, he taught economics at Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University.
His public service includes the California Governor’s Council of Advisers (2005 to the present), chair of the Working Party on International Macroeconomics for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2003–5), member of the Congressional Budget Office Advisory Panel, member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1989–91), and research adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (1981–84). He was also an economic analyst at Townsend Greenspan in New York from 1978 to 1981.
Among his many awards and honors are fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, fellow of the Econometric Society, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Alexander Hamilton Award for leadership in international finance at the U.S. Treasury, the George P. Shultz Public Service Award at Stanford University, and the Distinguished Service Award, U.S. Treasury, for design and implementation of financial reconstruction in Iraq.
Taylor earned his doctorate in economics at Stanford in 1973 and his bachelor’s degree in economics (summa cum laude) at Princeton University in 1968.
